Open data

Linking Open Data project in September 2007

Clear labeling of the licensing terms is a key component of Open data, and icons like those pictured here are being used for that purpose.

Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open content, and open access. The philosophy behind open data has been long established (for example in the Mertonian tradition of science), but the term "open data" itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives such as Data.gov.

Overview

The concept of open data is not new; but although the term is currently in frequent use, there are no commonly agreed definitions (unlike, for example, Open Access where several formal declarations have been made and signed).

Open data is often focused on non-textual material such as maps, genomes, connectomes, chemical compounds, mathematical and scientific formulae, medical data and practice, bioscience and biodiversity. Problems often arise because these are commercially valuable or can be aggregated into works of value. Access to, or re-use of, the data is controlled by organisations, both public and private. Control may be through access restrictions, licenses, copyright, patents and charges for access or re-use. Advocates of open data argue that these restrictions are against the communal good and that these data should be made available without restriction or fee. In addition, it is important that the data are re-usable without requiring further permission, though the types of re-use (such as the creation of derivative works) may be controlled by license.

A typical depiction of the need for open data:

Numerous scientists have pointed out the irony that right at the historical moment when we have the technologies to permit worldwide availability and distributed process of scientific data, broadening collaboration and accelerating the pace and depth of discovery…..we are busy locking up that data and preventing the use of correspondingly advanced technologies on knowledge

^[1] John Wilbanks, Executive Director, Science Commons

Creators of data often do not consider the need to state the conditions of ownership, licensing and re-use. For example, many scientists do not regard the published data arising from their work to be theirs to control and the act of publication in a journal is an implicit release of the data into the commons. However the lack of a license makes it difficult to determine the status of a data set and may restrict the use of data offered in an Open spirit. Because of this uncertainty it is also possible for public or private organizations such as IEEE to aggregate said data, protect it with copyright and then resell it.

Under "Toward Open Data" Connolly (2005, v.i.) gives two quotations:

• I want my data back. (Jon Bosak circa 1997)
• I've long believed that customers of any application own the data they enter into it..^[2] (This quote refers to Veen's own heart-rate data.)

Major sources of open data

Open data can come from any source. This section lists some of the fields that publish (or at least discuss publishing) a large amount of open data.

Open data in science

Main article: Open science data

The concept of open access to scientific data was institutionally established with the formation of the World Data Center system, in preparation for the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958.^[3] The International Council of Scientific Unions (now the International Council for Science) established several World Data Centers to minimize the risk of data loss and to maximize data accessibility, further recommending in 1955 that data be made available in machine-readable form.^[4]

While the open-science-data movement long predates the Internet, the availability of fast, ubiquitous networking has significantly changed the context of Open science data, since publishing or obtaining data has become much less expensive and time-consuming.

In 2004, the Science Ministers of all nations of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), which includes most developed countries of the world, signed a declaration which essentially states that all publicly-funded archive data should be made publicly available.^[5] Following a request and an intense discussion with data-producing institutions in member states, the OECD published in 2007 the OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding as a soft-law recommendation.^[6]

Open data in government

Several national governments have created web sites to distribute a portion of the data they collect.

• Data.gov - U.S. government open-data website. Launched in May 2009.
• Data.gov.uk - U.K. government open-data website. Launched in September 2009.
• Data.gov.au - Australian government open-data website. Launched in March 2011.
• Data.gc.ca - Canadian government open-data website. Launched in March 2011.
• opendata.go.ke - Kenyan government open-data website. Launched in Jul 2011.
• data.norge.no - Norwegian government open-data website. Launched in April 2010.
• data.overheid.nl - Dutch government open-data website.
• data.govt.nz - New Zealand Government initiative to publish Government Data under Creative Commons licences, defined further at NZ GOAL
• data.gov.it - Italian government open-data website. Launched in October 2011.^[7]

Additionally, other levels of government have established open data websites, such as the City of Ottawa, Canada [1] and the state of California, USA [2].

Arguments for and against open data

Arguments made on behalf of Open Data include the following:

• "Data belong to the human race". Typical examples are genomes, data on organisms, medical science, environmental data.
• Public money was used to fund the work and so it should be universally available.^[8]
• It was created by or at a government institution (this is common in US National Laboratories and government agencies)
• Facts cannot legally be copyrighted.
• Sponsors of research do not get full value unless the resulting data are freely available
• Restrictions on data re-use create an anticommons
• Data are required for the smooth process of running communal human activities (map data, public institutions)
• In scientific research, the rate of discovery is accelerated by better access to data.^[9]

It is generally held that factual data cannot be copyrighted.^[10] However, publishers frequently add copyright statements (often forbidding re-use) to scientific data accompanying publications. It may be unclear whether the factual data embedded in full text are part of the copyright.

While the human abstraction of facts from paper publications is normally accepted as legal there is often an implied restriction on the machine extraction by robots.

As the term Open Data is relatively new it is difficult to collect arguments against it. Unlike Open Access, where groups of publishers have stated their concerns, Open Data is normally challenged by individual institutions. Their arguments may include the following:

• the revenue earned by publishing data permits non-profit organisations to fund other activities (e.g. learned society publishing supports the society)
• the government gives specific legitimacy for certain organisations to recover costs (NIST in US, Ordnance Survey in UK)
• government funding may not be used to duplicate or challenge the activities of the private sector (e.g. PubChem)

Relation to other open activities

The goals of the Open Data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements.

• Open Access is concerned with making scholarly publications freely available on the internet. In some cases, these articles include open datasets as well.
• Open Content is concerned with making resources aimed at a human audience (such as prose, photos, or videos) freely available.
• Open Notebook Science refers to the application of the Open Data concept to as much of the scientific process as possible, including failed experiments and raw experimental data.^[11]
• Open Knowledge. The Open Knowledge Foundation argues for Openness in a range of issues including, but not limited to, those of Open Data. It covers (a) scientific, historical, geographic or otherwise (b) Content such as music, films, books (c) Government and other administrative information. Open Data is included within the scope of the Open Knowledge Definition, which is alluded to in Science Commons' Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data.^[12]
• Open Source (Software) is concerned with the licenses under which computer programs can be distributed and is not normally concerned primarily with data.

Funders' mandates

Several funding bodies which mandate Open Access also mandate Open Data. A good expression of requirements (truncated in places) is given by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) ^[13]:

• to deposit bioinformatics, atomic and molecular coordinate data, experimental data into the appropriate public database immediately upon publication of research results.
• to retain original data sets for a minimum of five years after the grant. This applies to all data, whether published or not.

Note the fundamental requirement to be able to replicate the experiment.

Other bodies active in promoting the deposition of data as well as fulltext include the Wellcome Trust.

Closed data

Several mechanisms restrict access to or reuse of data. They include:

• compilation in databases or websites to which only registered members or customers can have access.
• use of a proprietary or closed technology or encryption which creates a barrier for access.
• copyright forbidding (or obfuscating) re-use of the data.
• license forbidding (or obfuscating) re-use of the data (such as share-alike^{[citation needed]} or non-commercial)
• patent forbidding re-use of the data (for example the 3-dimensional coordinates of some experimental protein structures have been patented)
• restriction of robots to websites, with preference to certain search engines
• aggregating factual data into "databases" which may be covered by "database rights" or "database directives" (e.g. Directive on the legal protection of databases)
• time-limited access to resources such as e-journals (which on traditional print were available to the purchaser indefinitely)
• webstacles, or the provision of single data points as opposed to tabular queries or bulk downloads of data sets.
• political, commercial or legal pressure on the activity of organisations providing Open Data (for example the American Chemical Society lobbied the US Congress to limit funding to the National Institutes of Health for its Open PubChem data.^[14]

Organisations promoting open data

• d8taplex
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
• "Free our data" (The Guardian technology section)
• The Open Knowledge Foundation
• Talis
• Linking Open Data on the Semantic Web
• Blue Obelisk
• Infochimps.org
• Freebase
• Factual
• Information Retrieval Facility
• Open Data Network - Germany
• OpenSourceApi
• Socrata
• Regards Citoyens - France
• Open Data Day, December 4th, 2010 - International Hackathon
• International Development Research Centre
• Open Municipal Geodata Standard

See also

• Budapest Open Access Initiative
• Creative Commons licenses
• Open access (publishing)
• Open content
• Open research
• Merton Thesis
• Linked Data

References

1. ^ Science Commons
2. ^ Jeffrey Veen
3. ^ Committee on Scientific Accomplishments of Earth Observations from Space, National Research Council (2008). Earth Observations from Space: The First 50 Years of Scientific Achievements. The National Academies Press. pp. 6. ISBN 0309110955. http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11991&page=6. Retrieved 2010-11-24. 
4. ^ World Data Center System (2009-09-18). "About the World Data Center System". NOAA, National Geophysical Data Center. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/wdc/about.shtml. Retrieved 2010-11-24. 
5. ^ OECD Declaration on Open Access to publicly-funded data
6. ^ OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding
7. ^ "Wikitalia ovvero la partecipazione civica dopo e oltre i referendum". Libertiamo. 21 October 2011. http://www.libertiamo.it/2011/10/21/wikitalia-ovvero-la-partecipazione-civica-dopo-e-oltre-i-referendum/. Retrieved 7 November 2011. 
8. ^ On the road to open data, by Ian Manocha
9. ^ How to Make the Dream Come True argues in one research area (Astronomy) that access to open data increases the rate of scientific discovery.
10. ^ Towards a Science Commons includes an overview of the basis of Openness in science data.
11. ^ http://drexel-coas-elearning.blogspot.com/2006/09/open-notebook-science.html creation of term
12. ^ Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data
13. ^ [e-mail] Mailing List Archive
14. ^ Review of history and positions by the University of California

External links

• OpenPSI the (OpenPSI project) is a community effort to create UK government linked data service that supports research. It is a collaboration between the University of Southampton and the UK government, led by OPSI at the National Archive and is supported by JISC funding.
• Talis Community License
• Open Data Commons Database Licence (an update to the Talis Community License)
• Open Data Commons - legal tools for open data
• CKAN - a registry of open data from the Open Knowledge Foundation
• Video of Tim Berners-Lee at TED (conference) 2009 calling for "Raw Data Now"
• Six minute Video of Tim Berners-Lee at TED (conference) 2010 showing examples of open data